The Grapple

“If you want that kind of fight, I’m sure you can have it,” Wilbur Pease said. “You’d better put my hoodwink back on-I’d like to return to my side of the line.”

“I’ll do it, sir,” Chester said to Lieutenant Wheat. As he blindfolded Pease, he went on, “We don’t have anything in particular against the Confederate Army. You play fair when you fight us. Civilians playing soldier-that’s a different story.”

“Yes, it is. You’ll see.” Pease held out his hand. “Someone take me back, please.”

A soldier led him through the U.S. positions. Chester’s face was troubled as he watched the Confederate officer go. A different story…He wondered if his own words would come back to haunt him. Auto bombs, people bombs…The Kentuckians hadn’t started making life as miserable for the U.S. Army as they could.

“How much trouble do you think civilians can make?” By the troubled note in Lieutenant Wheat’s voice, he was worrying about the same thing.

“It can’t be worse than Utah. That’s all I know for sure.” Martin paused for a moment. “Of course, Utah was pretty bad.”

A brief burst of gunfire came from the Confederates, formally marking the end of the truce. A U.S. machine gun fired back, and after that it was time for everyone to keep his head down again.

The Confederates launched a salvo of their rockets. Most of them came down on Earlington. Civilians hadn’t evacuated the town, and bore the brunt of the hellish weapons’ bursts. “So much for taking care of their own,” Martin said into Delbert Wheat’s ear; they both crouched in the same shell hole. If something came down on them, the platoon would need new leaders.

“They don’t give a damn. They never have,” the young officer answered. “All they care about is scoring points off us.”

Chester nodded. It looked like that to him, too. Chaos reigned in the town. Wounded U.S. soldiers screamed for medics. So did wounded civilians. The corpsmen dealt with soldiers first. That was likely to hurt their popularity with the locals. They didn’t seem to care. Chester didn’t, either.

U.S. warplanes streaked low overhead. They were fighters, but each one carried a bomb slung under its belly. They were bound to be slower and less maneuverable till they dropped those bombs. Explosions on the Confederate side of the line said they weren’t wasting any time.

Barrels rumbled down toward the front, too. One platoon particularly caught Chester’s eye. All five machines were the newest U.S. model, sleek and deadly as so many tigers. All five were unbuttoned, too, their commanders and drivers looking out to see where they were. When they got closer to the firing, the drivers would close their hatches. Some barrel commanders liked to stand up in the cupola as long as they could. They took chances doing that, but their machines fared better.

One of those commanders drew Chester’s notice as he rolled down Highland Park and into the northern outskirts of Earlington. He spotted Chester, too, and no surprise, for they were about the same age: middle-aged survivors in a world of young men. Over the din of his engine, he called, “You went through it before and you came back for another round?” His accent said he came from somewhere close to the Canadian border.

“Yeah, I’m a glutton for punishment-just like you,” Chester shouted back. They gri

“You, too.” The barrel commander laughed. So did Martin. If they wanted to stay safe, what were they doing here?

Lieutenant Wheat gave Chester a quizzical look. “You know that guy?”

“No, sir,” Chester answered. “But us old farts, we’ve got to stick together.”

His platoon went into the line not long after the barrels clattered past. With help from the armored behemoths, they shoved the Confederates all the way out of Earlington. More rockets came in from the south. Featherston’s soldiers had lots of nasty weapons. Whether they had enough men to use them was a different question. For all their firepower, Confederate troops seemed thin on the ground.

That barrel commander fought his machine aggressively. His gu

Cinci

A bloated body hung from a telegraph pole. The placard tied around the man’s neck said, FRANC-TIREUR. That was officer talk for bushwhacker. No doubt U.S. authorities hanged him there to warn his buddies. His wasn’t the first corpse Cinci

He sighed. Things hadn’t been that much different in the Great War. You did what they told you to do, and you hoped you came out the other side in one piece. You volunteered for this, Cinci

Since he didn’t have an axe, truckload after truckload of supplies would have to do. In the Great War, the USA was content to make the CSA say uncle. This time, the United States seemed to want to kill the Confederate States with an axe. Cinci

The lead truck in the convoy didn’t run into an axe. It ran over a land mine, and started to burn. The lead truck never carried munitions, just because it was most likely to go boom. The driver probably didn’t have a chance. A different truck, chosen by lot, led every convoy. That could have been me, Cinci

No matter what happened to the lead truck, the convoy had to get through. The second truck drove off the road onto the soft shoulder on the right-and ran over another mine and blew up. “Do Jesus!” Cinci

Just how badly they’d outthought them became obvious a moment later. When the U.S. trucks in the convoy were all stopped and all bunched up behind the two that were in flames, a machine gun and assorted automatic rifles and submachine guns opened up on them from the woods to the left. As soon as Cinci

His bad leg and bad shoulder both howled protests at what he was making them do. He paid them no attention. Getting hit by an auto had been bad, very bad. Getting chewed up by machine-gun fire was one of the few things he could think of likely to be worse. He didn’t want to find out the hard way.

No more than a second or two after he threw himself to the ground and crawled behind a tire, a burst of bullets chewed up the cab of the truck. Glass from the windshield and the driver’s-side window blew out and then fell like rain.